Textkit Greek and Latin Forums

If those four soldiers had followed us, we would not have dared to put the weapons on the ship.
Si illi quattuor milites nos secuti essent, arma in nave ponere non ausi sumus.

That is how my answer key has this sentence translated. I have two questions about this sentence. First, I wonder why the perfect imperative is used in the apodosis rather than the pluperfect subjunctive. I know that there are variants on the forms conditionals, but I am wondering why specifically one might have been used here. Also, I thought that I should have used in + accusative to translate "on the ship". To me, it implies putting the weapons onto the ship, whereas in + ablative describes where the weapons already are (given its position in this translation).

I don't see an imperative anywhere. (In fact, I don't even know what a perfect imperative would be...)

The end though, almost certainly should be "ausī essēmus". The official answer key has several mistakes in the English-to-Latin translation exercises. I caught this one myself a while back. (That thread also has a few others I've caught.)

I think "imperative" was just a typo for "indicative".

whalenburns wrote:Also, I thought that I should have used in + accusative to translate "on the ship". To me, it implies putting the weapons onto the ship, whereas in + ablative describes where the weapons already are (given its position in this translation).

Here, though, the answer key is correct. What you say makes sense, but Latin did use in+ablative with verbs like pono or loco, as you can see in A&G §430. I think the usual explanation is that the ablative is due to the perspective that after you place the object it then it stays there.